The Bishop's Pawn Page 3

  “Our Assembly isn’t Westminster or Congress, Dick, but I believe you’ll hear more than one well-crafted speech this evening,” Robert said. “The future of this province may be determined by the decisions this parliament takes in the coming months.”

  “What I’m about to witness, then, is a kind of Constitutional Congress, British style?”

  Robert was about to reply when he stopped in his tracks and held out his arm to stop his companions. “What the hell – ”

  Out of the alley sprang a ragged street-urchin. Only the whites of his eyes were visible in the grime of his face. But they were wild – with fear or anger or simply excitement. His right arm was raised, his fingers wrapped around some kind of missile. Setting himself in the exaggerated pose of a prize-fighter about to deliver a haymaker, he uttered a high-pitched howl and let fly. Marc and Robert had already begun to flinch sideways in a purely reflex action, but Dougherty was too heavy and sluggish of foot to move at all. Only the sudden blink of his eyes indicated that he had registered the possibility of danger. Fortunately, they were closed when the egg struck him on the temple and began to ooze down to his chins and drip onto his gargantuan overcoat.

  Marc was the first to react, but the ragamuffin was too quick for him. He scampered out into the street, dodging numerous vehicles on their way to the parliament buildings a hundred yards to the west. And as Robert tried to wipe away the oozing egg – nicely putrefied and stinking – the boy cupped both filthy hands around his mouth and shouted, so that the dozens of citizens now within earshot could take notice:

  “Sodomite! May you rot in Hell!”

  Then he zigzagged his way through several broughams and buggies, and vanished.

  “Are you all right?” Robert said to Dougherty, who was staring, more amazed than frightened, at the mess on his lapels.

  “He’s got away,” Marc said, coming back to where Robert and Dick were now standing with their backs to the brick wall that surrounded the garden of Somerset House.

  “God dammit!” Dougherty bellowed. “It took Celia three weeks to get the winter’s breakfast-egg out of my waistcoat! She’ll be most chagrined at this thoughtless relapse!”

  “You’re all right, though?” Robert said as he eased Dick’s cap away from his broad forehead and peered at the red blotch where the missile had struck.

  “Don’t fuss, Robert. I’m unwounded. The little bastard had cracked the grenade open before propelling it. I hope his hand stinks worse than the rest of him.” Dougherty’s growl was clearly disarmed by a rumbling chuckle.

  “I’ll have Constable Cobb track the man down,” Marc said. “Cobb knows every alley-dweller and runabout in town.”

  “What’s the point?” Dougherty said. “The kid was hired by one of his betters to toss that reminder at me, and likely doesn’t even know who slipped him the penny.” Another chuckle began forming somewhere deep in Dick’s formidable belly. “You don’t think a stray like that could even pronounce ‘sodomite’ without help, do you?”

  “Dick, this could be serious,” Marc said. “Your application for admission to the Bar comes up next week. It could be that some members among the Law Society or the Family Compact have decided to take a more direct approach to discrediting you.”

  “Marc’s right,” Robert said, still swiping at the congealing mess on Dougherty’s lapel. “Perhaps you should go back to Baldwin House and – ”

  “And miss the oration of the century?” Dougherty rumbled. “Come on. We’re attracting more attention standing here like a trio of hobbled Clydesdales than if we were dancing the fandango in the buff!”

  And with that he moved his weight as expeditiously as Marc had ever seen – towards the crowd of Torontonians milling about in the fading light in front of the legislature.

  ***

  In the foyer, Robert was hailed by Francis Hincks, one of the bright young men of the Reform party. An impromptu meeting of sitting members and other supporters of Lord Durham had apparently been arranged in one of the committee rooms adjacent to the Assembly chamber.

  “They want me there,” Robert said apologetically to Dick and Marc. “We’ll be plotting our strategy for the coming months while the rhetoric above us keeps the building warm.”

  “Would you like a little gunpowder?” Dougherty said.

  “Well, then, Dick and I had better go on up to the gallery,” Marc said, “before we get jostled to death.”

  The foyer was rapidly filling with the cream of local citizenry. Marc recognized many of the faces, and while he nodded pleasantly to them, he was quite aware that his transformation from war hero and defender of the Crown to radical Reformer and Durhamite had left most of these former acquaintances coldly courteous – at best. And the sight of the mountainous and disgraced Yankee lawyer puffing obscenely at his side – with his coat-lapels besmirched and malodorous – did not help matters. Marc steered Dougherty to the stairway that led up to the spectator’s gallery. With Dick gripping the handrail in all ten digits and Marc heaving and pushing against various portions of the big man’s anterior, they managed to reach the upper landing. Marc spotted a space on the front bench, and they coasted down to it. Dougherty collapsed there with a Falstaffian wheeze, and proceeded to pant like a hound at the end of the day’s hunt. The gentleman next to him rose quietly and found a seat elsewhere.

  “Well, what do you think?” Marc said when Dougherty’s breathing had settled down and a little colour had returned to his cheeks.

  “Impressive, I must admit,” he replied. “It looks like the House of Commons I have always pictured in my mind whenever I think of the English Parliament and that centuries-long struggle against the tyranny of monarchs and their blue-blooded henchmen.”

  Marc smiled, knowing that when this chamber – and its counterpart next door, where the Legislative Council or Upper House met – was built in 1828, no expense had been spared in making it a worthy extension of the Mother Parliament in London. The thick-carpeted aisle, the Moroccan-leather chairs on either side of it, the gleaming banisters and polished railings, the raised and ornate speaker’s throne, the cathedral-like windows gracing the tall walls – these were not merely lavish or ostentatious: they were charged with historical meaning, with tradition that stretched back to King John and Runnymede. Doubtful Dick Dougherty might well boast of the boldest experiment in democracy since the Athenians, of the inalienable logic of the American Constitution, but he was also aware of exactly how much his British forebears had contributed to the making of laws and the institutions that buttressed them. Marc felt honoured to have met this man, and to be seated here beside him.

  The session was already in progress. A Tory member was speaking to the question: the debate on the committee report just received. The report contained the members’ response to Lord Durham’s principal recommendations: a union of the two Canadas, a unicameral or single legislature, and responsible government. Marc had assumed that the Tory group would assign their star performer the task of leading off the debate and setting the tone for the rest of the evening. But not only was Mowbray McDowell not on his feet dazzling the Assembly, he was not, as far as Marc could see, anywhere in the chamber.

  “And just where is this reincarnation of Aaron Burr?” Dougherty rumbled, his tiny, pig-like eyes darting about at the scene below him.

  “I don’t see him anywhere. There’s an empty chair down there next to Ignatius Maxwell, the Receiver-General. I suspect that’s where he’ll be sitting.”

  Dougherty suppressed a yawn. “Christ, I may have had one or two glasses too many of Baldwin’s excellent port.” Someone behind him tut-tutted, and a woman coughed into her hand.

  “I’m sure they won’t hold him back too much longer,” Marc said. “This gallery is packed, and I’ve rarely seen this many members present.”

  “Well, they certainly didn’t come to hear the fellow droning away down there. He’s an insomniac’s delight!”

  “Shh!”

  Dougherty swivelled a
round as far as his corpulence would permit. “I am deeply sorry, ma’am, if I have interrupted your slumber.”

  This riposte earned him a full-throated “harrumph!”

  Fortunately the speaking member had finished his oration, though it was a minute or more before anyone realized it. Every head in the gallery now tilted forward in expectation. Would Mowbray McDowell make a dramatic entrance, stride down the aisle under the blazing candelabras, bow to the Speaker, and take his rightful place in the front row?

  He did not. A barely suppressed groan shuddered through the gallery as a well-known Orangeman was recognized, stood, and launched his jeremiad with the throttle wide open. That anyone could reach such a pitch of umbrage so rapidly seemed to startle the usually unflappable barrister from New York.

  “Jesus,” Dougherty whispered to Marc, “did the fellow start warming up in the lobby?”

  Rant and invective though it was, the member’s speech was music to the ears of every Durhamite in the chamber, for the Loyal Orange Lodge – the staunchest monarchists and anti-republicans in the province – had abruptly switched their tune. It seemed that there were some features of Lord Durham’s report that ought to be considered, supported even. The suggestion that this softened attitude was the result of Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s recent suggestion that the Loyal Orange Lodge should be outlawed was indignantly denied. Indeed, the current spokesman denied it yet again, amid the hoots and catcalls of men around him who had once taken his support for granted. Three times the Speaker had to call for order to silence the desk-thumping and shouts of “shame” and “sit down.”

  “Just like home,” Dougherty said, vastly amused.

  However, when the member did sit down – unshamed – and the fellow next to him rose to address the House, the gallery’s cheerful engagement quickly changed to sullen resignation. It had become evident that the Tory strategy for the evening was to have a number of members, from several camps, speak to the pertinent issues, set them clearly in the minds of all those present, and then have Mowbray McDowell make his entrance and have the last – and devastatingly potent – word. Although disappointed, Marc could see the sense in this plan. The Reform group in the Assembly was a shadow of its former self. It had been dealt a near death-blow in the 1836 election. Mackenzie’s abortive rebellion the next year had further depleted their ranks and disillusioned many of their moderate supporters in the countryside. Perry, Bidwell, Rolph, Robert Baldwin, Mackenzie himself – all had been silenced, some of them now in exile in the United States. Only the arrival of Lord Durham last year and his subsequent Report had breathed new life into the movement. But, alas, its most eloquent spokesmen were not here in this chamber.

  However, after two years of heavy-handed (but not inefficient) rule by George Arthur and the Tory-controlled Assembly, the conservative alliance itself had begun to show cracks in its solidarity. The Orange Order was disaffected. Long-time Tory stalwart, William Merritt, had begun making noises in support of the union proposal. Many in the Family Compact, the ruling clique, simply wanted no change of any kind, despite the fact that it was the status quo that had prompted the rebellion. Others wanted to cut the backward and Pope-ridden Quebecers adrift by annexing Montreal and Anglicizing it. How anyone, whatever his rhetorical prowess, could forge a consensus out of this political hodgepodge, was beyond Marc.

  One hour and six speeches later, with the gallery glassy-eyed and sitting members slumped in their Moroccan leather, the wunderkind, at some cue Marc did not detect, stepped onto his stage. Mowbray McDowell, MLA, entered the chamber quietly and walked demurely down the aisle towards the Speaker’s chair as if he were just an ordinary member arriving somewhat late for an ordinary evening of parliamentary palaver. He wasn’t halfway along, however, before the restless and muttering gallery went silent. People simply gawked.

  Marc was expecting someone tall and imposing, but McDowell was not much over five feet in height, and exceedingly slim. His hair, slicked back and neatly brushed, was blond – and further bleached in the dazzle of the chamber’s central candelabrum. The skin of his face was correspondingly pale, the eyes a remarkable blue, the features subtle, almost ascetic. But he walked like a patrician, with the practiced ease of a Roman senator. For a moment Marc thought that the Speaker might bow to the new member, reversing the tradition.

  Seconds later, McDowell stepped sprightly up to the chair beside Ignatius Maxwell, shook hands with the Receiver-General, tilted his head towards someone in the gallery, and turned as the Speaker, by prearrangement, called on the Member from Frontenac to deliver his maiden speech in Queen Victoria’s colonial assembly.

  Thus did he begin. Coming from such a small man, the voice startled the spectators: it was deep, richly modulated, authoritative. There was no rant in it, no bombast, no manufactured dudgeon. Here was a man reasoning with men, laying out the home truths that they, like him, must come to accept because all the alternatives were worse. Far worse. In spite of himself, Marc was enthralled – and very worried. McDowell’s approach was masterful. He began by pointing out a few sad but incontrovertible facts. Whatever the merits or demerits of Lord Durham’s recommendations, the earl had been chosen for the job because his own caucus had found him too radical and unreasonable to bear, and hence he was safer off in North America than in England. The earl had then selected several advisors whose own past was morally suspect. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who had undoubtedly penned much of the Report, had once been imprisoned for kidnapping an heiress. Moreover, the earl himself had spent less than a week in Upper Canada, while devoting most of his time and effort to Quebec – with his sights set on freeing the French rebels or ensuring that those convicted were exiled to sunny Bermuda instead of Van Diemen’s Land. This latter folly had broken the terms of his commission, for which legal indiscretion he had been summarily recalled. Back in England he had promptly fallen ill from some mysterious ailment, letting his ill-starred advisors, and even his wife, complete the Report. The Melbourne administration balked at even tabling the document, but finally relented under public pressure. It was clear to any objective eye that the Whig government in London was in disarray, and due to collapse any day now. Little wonder that the earl’s Report – whatever its merits or demerits – was languishing in parliamentary limbo.

  Now what did all of this mean for Upper Canada? It meant that fractious debate, of the kind heard here this evening and earlier in the week, had split both parties several ways. Why should this be so? Because Lord Durham’s recommendations were a mishmash of contradictory and self-cancelling proposals! Why, then, should a fledgling provincial legislature be saddled with the responsibility of making sense out of nonsense – nonsense penned by men whose probity itself was dubious? Surely what esteemed members of this Assembly must do is cease and desist from bootless debate, especially those who valued tradition and authority. Within months the Whig government in London must fall, and be replaced by a sane and just and loyal administration under the stewardship of the great Robert Peel. Let that gentleman and his cabinet propose a sensible solution to Canada’s problems, using whatever aspects of the infamous Durham Report they deemed practicable.

  “Let each of us in this hallowed chamber unite in our determination to wait upon developments in the mother country, to wait upon proposals that are clear and unambiguous – whether they be favourable to one side or the other. Then, and only then, shall we be able to enter into a reasoned debate with any hope of a just and durable outcome!”

  My God, Marc thought, the fellow has done it! He’s articulated a strategy to hold the warring factions of his group together until the Whigs reject the Report out of expediency or the British Tory party recovers the power it lost in 1835! Robert and his fellow Reformers were going to have a tough row to hoe, as were those who had agreed to write broadsides for them.

  The roar of approval that cascaded down upon the desk-thumping members from the gallery above made it clear that Mowbray McDowell had struck the right chord. As McDowell
stood up to acknowledge the cheers, Marc suddenly remembered that he had met this man! It had been more than three years ago, in June or July of 1835, just weeks after his arrival from England. He had been at a soiree at Government House, where Sir John Colborne had taken him around and introduced him to half a dozen debutantes and as many gentlemen. One of them had been Mowbray McDowell, but the name – like so many others in those first hectic months in a new and strange country – had not stuck.

  Marc now turned to Dougherty for the first time since McDowell had entered the chamber and mesmerized all within it. “Well, Dick, what do you make of that?”

  Dougherty’s eyes popped open. The pouches surrounding them were puffed and red. “Has the wretched fellow got here yet?” he muttered between blinks.

  “You slept through the whole thing!”

  “I must have. Everybody seems to be leaving, including the Speaker.”

  Marc helped his sleepy friend to his feet. “McDowell may not have been Daniel Webster or Lord Wellington, Dick, but he was the next best thing.”

  ***

  Marc guided Dougherty, still drowsy from his forty-minute nap, up the four steps to the stairwell. Most of the galleryites had preceded them, but one of them appeared to be lingering near the stairs, awaiting their arrival. Marc recognized the man as Everett Stoneham, postmaster-general in the current Executive Council. The fellow was busy working himself into a rage.

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve, Dougherty, showing your ugly face in the Queen’s parliament!” He stepped in front of Dick, blocking the stairwell.

  Dougherty was unmoved, or merely sleepy. “I’ve been told this is a free country,” he said quietly. “Or used to be.”

  “You’d better save your clever lawyer’s talk for your examination by the Benchers next week,” Stoneham seethed. “Though I’m here to guarantee you’ll never, never, be admitted to the Bar in this province. The truth about you will come out, and when it does, you won’t be able to find a hole deep enough to hide in!”